Work Text:
Every morning at 7:30 he will wake up and dial 411, overwhelming despair at the pointlessness of life, and allow himself to wallow in it for a while. He will lie there and just feel it, feel it until Enjolras storms in to berate him for what he is doing to himself. Enjolras will fuss at him then take his Penfield Mood Organ console and dial in 213, dutiful need to live up to responsibilities, and that is enough to get Grantaire to get up and face the day.
It could be worse, he supposes. Enjolras is not cruel to him. He never dials in actual happiness. Grantaire does not know if he can actually handle happiness.
“I don’t see why you do this to yourself” Enjolras would sigh, watching Grantaire as he shaved.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” was all Grantaire ever said in return.
Sometimes Enjolras would look angry at that, and storm out. Grantaire didn’t mind. Enjolras was always beautiful, but he was especially beautiful when looking angry, perfect brow furrowing, rosy lips pursing, golden locks flowing behind him as he stormed away.
Sometimes though, like today, he would persist.
“Why don’t you hook up to the Box?” he asks. “That would make you feel better?”
“Mercerism is load.”
“It’s not. It’s something to believe in.”
Grantaire doesn’t answer, instead he washes off his razor as aggressively as he can. “I need to go to work.”
As he is leaving, he calls out to Enjolras. “I’m going to be late. I need to pick up some more seed for Lola.”
He doesn’t need to pick up seed for Lola, not really, but he will. Lola may be wire and circuitry, but she keeps him from going insane, probably. And she wasn’t always like that. He had a real canary, once, and he also called her Lola, and she would hop onto his finger and sing, and he would smile at her and pet her feathery little head with a single, large finger.
His fake Lola still does that. If he himself didn’t know that Lola had died a while ago, had just dropped dead one night and left Grantaire all alone, he would have sworn that it was still his Lola. But no. She is a replacement, cheaper than a real bird, because after the nuclear disaster that killed off so many and chased most of humanity off of Earth, all real animals are expensive.
The thing is though, he still loves Lola, truly, legitimately loves the little electric bird. She does not love him back, cannot love him back, but he still loves her.
And that is why he knows that Mercerism is a load, that empathy is a load. That’s what Mercerism isn’t it? A religion based around empathy, and he knows it’s a load. Because he loves wire and circuitry, feels empathy for something fake, emotion where there is none.
It doesn’t make any sense.
And that is how he knows it is a load.
It could be worse, Grantaire supposes again.
He could be a chickenhead, or an anthead, his brain softened by the radiated dust that still coats their little world. His body has yet to betray him. He could go to Mars if he wanted to, away from Mercerism and Lola and everything.
But he doesn’t want to. So he stays on Earth, ugly little Earth.
He works as a repairman, for televisions and radios and such. He spends all day tinkering with wire and circuity, spends all day surrounded by wire and circuitry. He has coworkers, but they do not speak to him much. To his left works Feuilly, who has red hair and works diligently, humming to himself, and to his right there is Bossuet, who is new and makes mistakes more than either of them. Bossuet listens to the radio while he works, listens to the Buster Friendly show. (“You listen to that talk show shit Lesgle?” Grantaire had asked him on his first day, and immediately Feuilly leaned over. “Don’t pay attention to Grantaire. He thinks everything is shit.”)
Sometimes, though, like today, they want to chat. “Hey Grantaire, did you hear the news?” Bossuet asks as he sits down.
“I don’t watch the news.”
Feuilly laughed, not looking up from the television he was fixing. “Of course you don’t.”
Bossuet was not deterred. “Well, on it they were talking about the Voigt-Kampff Test, and whether not it will work on those new andys. Oh what were they called...”
“Nexus-6.” mumbled Grantaire. “The newest android model. Nexus-6.”
“Right, that’s it. Well apparently they’re is some controversy now because the Nexus-6 andys might be able to pass the Voigt-Kampff empathy test! Isn’t that scary? Not because they feel empathy or anything, just because they can fake it so well.”
“That’s insane,” snorts Feuilly, still not looking up. “There’s no way. They’re just machines. I don’t see why they have to made so realistic anyway.”
“It makes it scary, doesn’t it? They could be hiding anywhere? Your neighbor could be a rogue andy and you could never know.”
Grantaire has been silent, working while they talk, but now he pauses. “...The Voigt-Kampff was never a hundred percent though was it? A bone marrow test is the only sure way to tell an android from a human. Especially with these new Nexus-6 models; they’re realistic inside and out.”
Bossuet blinks. “I suppose.”
“So, if we can’t tell andys from humans, what’s to say the bounty hunters can? Do you think they’ve ever retired a human?”
“No way. We would have heard about that.”
“Where? On Buster fucking Friendly? Like the cops would let you know they killed a human while trying to kill an android that escaped to Earth and wasn’t hurting anyone.”
Feuilly finally looks up from the circuit board. “They don’t kill the androids Grantaire. You can’t kill something that was never alive.”
Grantaire bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes copper. “You know what I meant. Slip of the tongue.”
Feuilly looks at him for a long moment, then he shakes his head and laughs. “Drinking before work again are we Grantaire? Honestly, the thought of it. It would be like... like saying this TV here was killed!”
Grantaire doesn’t answer, and gets back to repairing the radio in front of him.
He thinks about picking Lola’s food.
He picks up her birdseed, and, after a lot of thought, food for himself and Enjolras. When he got back to his apartment Enjolras is still there, curled into a chair, Buster Friendly playing on the television set.
“Now you’re watching that shit?” is how he greets him. Enjoras turns to him, blue eyes piercing.
“Honestly Grantaire. You don’t believe in Mercerism, and you don’t believe in Buster Friendly. Do you believe in anything?”
He thrusts the bag of food at Enjolras. “Not particularly,” he answers, and hopes Enjolras will let it go. He doesn’t. He never lets anything go.
“Why don’t you believe in Mercerism? I thought everyone on Earth loved Mercer.”
“Hardly. It’s just a way to keep us in check, just like the mood-organ devices they sell to control our emotions. Make us think we’re all connected. Connect us. Stupid little boxes that connect you to some universal experience. That’s not how empathy works.”
Enjolras has started eating, but he looks up at Grantaire through long eyelashes. “Isn’t it?”
Grantaire doesn’t answer.
Later that night Enjolras crawls into his bed, and his skin is soft and warm.
“Is that why you misuse your mood-organ device?” he whispers before they go to sleep.
“I don’t misuse it,” answers Grantaire, stroking along Enjolras’ spine. “It gives you chemicals to make you feel emotions. That’s how I use it.”
“But you use it to feel despair.”
“That’s something for me to feel.”
Enjolras presses his head to Grantaire’s chest. “I don’t understand.”
“No. No you don’t.”
In the morning Enjolras is no longer in his bed, and once again Grantaire finds himself dialing 411, and their pattern begins again.
One day a bounty hunter comes to their work, a large, frightening man who calls himself Javert, to ask them about escaped androids.
“They were working as activists, before they went into hiding. Reports have have said that some of their kind has ended up here.”
He wants to question the workers. See if anyone knows anything.
“Yeah right,” laughs Bossuet. “He wants to see if any of us are androids.”
Grantaire did not say anything.
When he was called into the room where Javert was questioning, he forced a smile. Javert did not attempt to return it.
Grantaire tried again. “Hello sir. I hope your animal is well?”
The man nodded jerkily. “A horse. Gymont.” Exchanging names and breeds of ones animals was common courtesy. Showed you weren’t funny, that you had an animal to take care of, to show empathy to.
Grantaire let out a low whistle. “A horse! A real horse. That must have cost you a bit. I suppose you make more ki-retiring andys than I do fixing radios. I have a canary. Lola.”
The bounty hunter seemed to already be tired of small talk. “Mr. Grantaire, do you know anyone you might suspect is an android? Anyone who acts oddly?”
“No sir. But Bossuet says those uh... What are they called? Nexum-9s? That they are pretty much indistinguishable.”
“Nexus-6.”
“Ah right, that’s it. So I don’t think I’ve seen one but you never know.” There are files sitting in front of Javert. Grantaire swallows dry. “Can I see your files? Maybe I’ve seen one and don’t know it.”
Javert glared at him.
“Mr. Grantaire, would you mind going through a Voigt-Kampff test?”
“An empathy test? You don’t think I’m an andy do you?”
"It’s standard procedure, I assure you.”
Grantaire knew damn well it wasn’t, but what could he do.
(He'd like to be retired, maybe. Like an android. He almost wishes he could fail an empathy test. Of course they would realize, later, looking at his marrow, that he was not an android at all, but it would be too late.)
“Some of your friends are dead,” he whispers to Enjolras that night in bed.”I saw the files. A bounty hunter named Javert got them.”
Enjolras is stiff in his arms. “Who?”
“Jean Prouvaire. Bahorel too. Combeferre and Courfeyrac are still at large.”
Enjolras hums. “Prouvaire was a clever one. If they got him, we are not safe.”
Grantaire tightens his arms around Enjolras. “I’ll protect you. No one knows you’re here. No one will find you.”
In the dark he can still see Enjolras’ piercing blue eyes. “That is very kind of you.”
He can’t even see any circuitry behind the blue of his eyes. Sometimes he forgets that it's there.
(The next morning Enjolras will not be in his bed, he will be up, looking angry, ranting about how the bounty hunters are no better than them, than the androids who escaped from their servitude on Mars, who killed people to escape, and Grantaire will dial 411 while he talks and feel the chemical for misery rush through his body. But for now, for now he holds Enjolras.)
Javert is hanging around the city, but he doesn’t suspect Grantaire. No one ever suspects Grantaire.
He would never house an android fugitive. Not a useless alcoholic like him. He is not clever enough.
“What is your plan?” he asks Enjolras once. “What’s the point of this?”
“To prove a point,” Enjolras answers. “They are no better than us! Why must we be servants to them just because we are androids? Because they created us? We are just as good as any human!”
That is when Grantaire asks “Could you pass an empathy test?”
Enjolras rages and storms out of the room, and he truly is beautiful when he is angry.
Lola gets sick. Not really sick of course. Something must be going wrong in her wiring. He realizes it one morning, before he leaves for work.
“Enjolras,” he calls. “Something’s wrong with Lola. If she get’s worse can you call me?”
“Can you afford to have it fixed?”
“I’ll find a way. Just call me okay?”
Enjolras is focusing on a pre-disaster book that Grantaire found for him, but he nods.
He never calls. “I got distracted, and it wasn’t working by the time I checked on it,” he says, holding out the small feathery body.
Grantaire takes her, and then he begins to weep. Enjolras looks surprised. “Why are you crying? You said you would get it fixed anyway.”
“You don’t understand,” Grantaire cries. “I loved her.”
Enjolras snorts. “It was a robot bird. How could you love it? It didn’t love you back.”
Grantaire looks at Enjolras for a long time, tears rolling down his nose and chin. Then he threw his arms around Enjolras.
“You’re right. You’re right. She didn’t love me back. She couldn’t. She was just a machine. A machine can’t love.” He presses his head to Enjolras’ chest, listening to his electric heartbeat.
“But I still love her.”
I still love-